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My hair is frizzy, one of the telltale effects of hormones raging above baseline in pregnancy, and I find it everywhere: on my clothes, in the bristles of my honey colored brush, on the bed.

Outside it is gray and cold and drizzling. There is dirt on the floor. Around the lip of the clay pots that holds the assortment of plants, dust, thick enough to write my name.

Last night I was up, squirming around, uncomfortable most of the night. The sultriness of the day spills much into the nights. This morning it’s the same - uncomfortable, here in this thin skin, ready to cry.

Everything is always a risk. Loving. Trying to put down roots. Giving birth. Going out the front door. Getting on a plane to somewhere, and having it crash out in the ocean. Can you imagine? Waiting out there, with your terror, for death?

Of course I know nothing of terror, and yet. It’s scary here too some days. Here has its own kind of heartbreak: our financial situation sucks and it’s quite possible we could mess things up, have nothing, throw in the towel, go. To where? To what? Even when there are cyclamens, and stretching, and good poems there is always this. A shake up, a heartache, a fight, an empty bank account, a splinter under your fingernail, a bitten tongue.

And some days its hard to see that there is anything more than this: hormones and exhaustion and possible loss. Ostrich days, where all I want is to burry my head in deep and wait for moments that are better, sweeter, less filled with tears.

And then there was this: inside stretching, I picked up Paulo Coelho’s newest “the winner stands alone”, and a box of Moroccan Rose. Reading, and felt as though I was breaking off chunks of bread to feed my hungry soul, sunlight on the floor, my muscles limber in repose. I looked up to see the lush pink of the cyclamens on the windowsill blooming, and things stopped for an instant. I was just there, air in my lungs, the fuchsia petals on the sill glowing with afternoon light.

And suddenly I was full. That single slender moment, utterly perfect. Whole.

And in the end, this is what I live for: to find myself again and again in these moments, to locate myself here. While today rain pelts down, and the green leaves of the sassafras trees whip about, and the stock market dips and rises and does unpredictable things and nothing is ever secure, yesterday there was that.

Yesterday there were those few breaths on the floor, words humming in my heart, my spine bending towards my knees, my slender wrists resting on the bones of my ankles, reaching, stretching. Those few moments before everything picked up and carried on: roti and potatoes for dinner, laundry, packing, reading stories, conversations with the un-born.

What is this life for, if not to live in it moment by moment? What is success, if not to experience sometimes and again irrefutable joy in this right now? And to hold that joy with the same hands that rinse the dirty dishes the sink; the same hands that write and love; the same ones that carried the little ones to the loo in the dark, and the ones that supported friends and family and also the ones which threw things in blind rage; the hands that cupped my own face streaming with tears, tiredness eating the marrow of my bones.

What is success, if not this, this hunger to be alive right now? To be here, loving, dreaming, running hard down the road?

June is one of my favorite months: cloud-torn skies, hail, thunderstorms, and sudden rainbows above the wet curled ferns. Its easy to be grateful in June, to watch the poplars bend and bend and bend in the wind without breaking, and to feel glad. It’s easy to want to be something in June, to want to be alive, and to be living also: to want to push past whatever was holding things back. Tiredness matters less when the clear air is full of swallowtails and the scent of hyacinth.

June, and the mercury is still playing strong, the temperature flirting with cool, barely. Above us, flying in wide swooping arcs that make my heart ache with pleasure, bluebirds, streaks of summer sky.

But the heat is a killer, a convict … untouched!

***

June: reading more short stories, getting more words off the page. With a book or two of some sort.

This June is a little changed. This June, “Shivaansh” is 20 weeks and running. He kicks but mostly sleeps, I guess! Great Kid, eh?

And, I begin to look like “boa constrictor who swallowed an elephant”(Linda Goodman, anyone??)

June: And its his birth month … imagine, him being born on the most powerful day of Wicca, on Summer Solstice!

And, imagine … me with him! Somethings are just waiting to be happened!

cool mornings,billowing white sails on the river sturdy, irregular boats dancing on them, a tango of rippling images on the water.

Reflections!

i sit there, on the fence... now young, now maturenow glee, now gloomy... i sit there, outside myselfimages come in deluge, high tidesriding those surfs high above is ... menow drowning, now seizingeddies...wrapped in a warped timemind - has the future bearingsheart - the pastun-synched

the whirlpool rises...have you noticed, there's always a void at the center of these whirlpoolsits the void that runs them, its the void that runs the universe

as the dusk dawns, slowly, steadily, eventlessly ...its an event.the sky technicolor from violet to purple to deepest indigo and then the fire-gold descends...streaks of amethyst flushing the crimson- the fading of greyness hangs with the giant smoke screens of cirrus

caught unawares, i stand in the rain ... drenched, staring at the unseen place in the water...the sea was angry and the infinity of white caps had replaced the graceful white sails.

a gust of wind chilli shudder, this time with cold.

minutes to hours... its pitter-patter,clear skywater no longer thereonly the salt in the breeze